Campus Community growth causes a shift

Over the summer, executive leadership restructured the Campus Community experience, but the enormous crowd at the first Campus Community of the year meant that even more changes were in order.

At an Aug. 21 meeting with Senior Vice President for Spiritual Development David Nasser, Executive Director of Residence Life Dustin Dubose, Senior Vice President for Student Affairs Mark Hine and LU Shepherd Executive Director Wes Franklin rolled out a handful of new changes to spiritual life events on campus and to student leadership, including some changes to Campus Community.

The office’s plan had been simple enough: offer two service times for Campus Community in the Center for Music and the Worship Art’s Concert Hall rather than the Vines Center. The website was updated. Leadership was informed and trained. Security measures were in place. Dorms were assigned a specific service to attend in an effort to crowd control.

But Aug. 29 blew the expectations of administration out of the water. With 5,100 students coming to the event — more than three times the amount of seating in the Concert Hall — plans had to change.

For the Fall 2018 semester, the Office of Spiritual Development decided Campus Community will continue to meet in the Vines Center, but the time has been moved to 6:30 p.m.

“(Aug. 30), I met with some of our student leadership, and we came up with a better alternative,” Nasser said.

By working in tandem with student leadership, Nasser believes that the new start time for Campus Community will benefit students with busy schedules.

“We started the process by thinking about our commuter students and our athletes who tend to want to go to bed early because they get up at 5 a.m. for practice,” Nasser said.

The time shift allows for community groups and halls to eat together before or after the service in the Vines Center, affording community groups more flexibility on Wednesday nights.

Nasser mentioned that the new arena under construction next to the Vines Center might be the future home to Campus Community.

“It depends on where God’s got us,” Nasser said. “At the rate we are growing, I don’t know what the Lord will do.”

The new arena is estimated to seat around 4,000, but even with floor seating, it’s still yet to be determined if the arena could fit the growing population of Campus Community.

“The big news about Campus Community is that it’s growing,” Nasser said. “And we are trying to accommodate the student body with different options.”

Nasser said the growing attendance is because members of campus leadership are stepping into their roles as leaders.

“I would attribute a lot of the growth to buy in at multiple levels of leadership,” Nasser said.

Nasser said the Wednesday gauntlet — Campus Community and community groups — fuel off of each other, making each component necessary to the other. When community groups are doing well, it shows in Campus Community and vise-versa.

“Our student leaders, our (resident assistants), (resident shepherds), (resident directors), shepherds, (and) community group leaders, are just locked in right now,” Nasser said. “God’s given us a real sense of momentum together.”

Nasser will continue to lead from the stage on Wednesday nights in the Vines Center. He will start the highly anticipated series “Seven” Sept. 5, which will walk the growing attendance through the seven churches John pleads with in Revelation. The series will be driven by the idea of hope and will include state-of-the-art technology to help students encounter Asia Minor in a fresh way.